A breif over view on why to lower or elimenate meat consumption.

What's with these crazy vegetarians anyway? Why would they choose not to eat MEAT? ;) Well there are many reasons.
Some vegetarians choose to stop eating meat for compassionate reasons - they don't want animals to die for their consumption or they don't support 'animal factories'. Animal factories are large factories that raise and slaughter animals, often the conditions are extremely unfavorable for the livestock. In these factories animals have little room to move, they are always indoors, they are feed growth hormones and they are overfeed. Be informed about what you eat and visit one of the many vegetarian sites that explain more about animals conditions.
PETA as intimidating as they are does a great video on factory farms, it's called 'Meet Your Meat' and can be found at http://www.goveg.com/factoryFarming.asp.
An example of a factory farm ^.
Although compassion is a major factor in many vegetarians choices to alter their diets it not the only reason. The general public seems to assume that vegetarians always choose their diet for compassionate reasons, the truth is however that there are many other reasons that I will outline below.
Albert Einstein once said “nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet”. Einstein was a vegetarian who knew what he was talking about, vegetarianism is an economical, environmentally and healthy lifestyle that has the potential to change the world for the better.
The environment: If livestock operation were less needed we could cut down on 18% of our green house gases, we could also reduce 64% of harmful anthropogenic ammonia emissions, cutting down significantly on the chance of acid rain. We would also have more water for human consumption and less water pollution from animal wastes etc. Check out what David Suzuki says about cutting down on meat consumption at:
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/WOL/Challenge/Newsletter/Two.asp
Economy and Humanitarian reasons : Cutting down on meat consumption would benefits man kind. We could save a great deal of money that we are presently spending on livestock feed and maintenance of livestock. We could realistically solve world hunger since 70% of crops in the US alone are used to feed livestock. Peter Singer, the author of ‘Animal Liberation’ says “if Americans were to reduce their meat consumption by 10% for one year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption” meaning we could feed 60 million people. Check out how Peter Singer says you can make a difference : http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/make_a_difference.html
Health: A vegetarian diet also reduces the risk of getting many diseases. A study by the Oxford Vegetarian Society concludes that vegetarians have a 28% less chance of getting coronary heart disease. They also have less chance of having diabetes, many different types of cancers, and gallstones AND they have a less chance of being obese. Yay!
So with these environmentally, economical and health benefits we defiantly owe it to ourselves, the plant and others to make the choice to cut down or eliminate meat completely from our diets. With veg diets you can still eat all kinds of great food and feel even better about the life choices you make for yourself. You don't have to go to a field and live with the animals , join PETA ,be an extremest or live on tofu --- Trust me! Even if you cut back on meat every little bit helps the animals, environment and yourself, besides humans really don't need meat every meal, your body won't shut down with out it. I've been vegetarian for about a year and a half and I haven't died yet. Either way get informed and you decide!